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Zendesk to CRM 2015 and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Integration

Installing the Zendesk to CRM 2015 or Dynamics 365 integration

These instruction have been updated from the Zendesk instructions provided here: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/203660156-Zendesk-for-Microsoft-Dynamics-CRM-Part-1-Installing-the-Zendesk-for-Microsoft-Dynamics-CRM-as-a-module-in-Microsoft-Dynamics-CRM

They use a combination of the original processes that Zendesk have created originally for CRM 2011 and that worked on Pre SP1 versions of CRM 2013. The packages referenced have been update by InteractiveWebs to work with CRM 2013 Post SP1 and CRM 2015 (technically all versions but we recommend post SP 0.1)

Update Security Roles

Select the User that you wish to use to bring in Zendesk Integration Items. We are using in this example the Administrator account, but it could be anyones account.

Then with the account loaded, select the additional item dropdown menu to the far right of the top level menu, selecting Manage Roles

Select Zendesk Administrator

There is also a Zendesk Read configuration setting. The Zendesk support site has details on how this can be used.

Double Click on that name to load the account.

Configure Entity Mapping

In your browser, click on Refresh to reload the CRM page, and in turn the top level menu that has been updated after import for the Zendesk Solution.

In the CRM system, select Settings / Zen Entity Mappings

Click + New

The most typical setups are things like on a “Contact” entity, match the Zendesk ticket requester with the email address on the “Contact” record. But what if you wanted to match of the “Full Name” field instead in both systems? Now you can by utilizing entity mappings.

Select the following items

Entity Name – This is the Microsoft Dynamics entity that you want the mapping applied to.

Zendesk Object – This is where you can select which object from Zendesk you’d like to pick your field from.

Zendesk Field – This will populate with values depending on your selection from Zendesk Object.

Entity Field – This is a list of fields associated to the selected Entity Name. Pick which field you want to match to the Zendesk Field.Click “Save” to store the mapping.

Click the ZD Entity Mapping tile to return to the page.

Repeat steps 1-5 if you wish to add more mappings for additional Entities..

Here’s a list of the most common types of mappings:

Account/Organization Entity

Entity Name: “Account” or “Organization”

Zendesk Object: Organization

Zendesk Field: Name

Entity Field: Account Name

Contact/Lead Entity

Entity Name: “Contact” or “Lead”

Zendesk Object: User

Zendesk Field: EmailAddress

Entity Field: EmailAddress 1

Configure Zendesk Settings Page

In CRM Navigate to Settings / ZD Settings (Note that this one is not the ZD Personal Settings Menu Item).

NOTE – This works best in Chrome – We found troubles with IE and Safari (not our work)!

You now need to set up your Zendesk credentials so that the system can authenticate to the appropriate Zendesk instance.

To do so, navigate to Settings, then locate the Zendesk Settings->Settings title and click the title.

You will be presented with 4 sections:

Ticket view defaults – global default settings for ticket views in the Zendesk ticket panel. This sets the defaults at the account level, but can be overwritten by individual preferences by each user.

Filtering – sets the default values for filters in the Zendesk ticket panel.

Sorting – sets the default sort order for tickets in the Zendesk ticket panel.

Authentication – enter your Zendesk subdomain (make sure you specify HTTP vs. HTTPS if you have SSL enabled) and login credentials (you need administrator credentials). This gives your Microsoft Dynamics CRM users read-only access to available tickets. To create or edit tickets from Microsoft Dynamics CRM, your Dynamics users must have a Zendesk license, and they will need to enter their own credentials (explained later in this article).

Mapped record types – enables you to modify the data elements that display in a Zendesk user profile when a ticket is loaded. You can choose from Lead, Contact, and Account. All fields are available, including custom fields.

Ticket-to-case mapping – identifies data items that should be mapped from standard Zendesk ticket fields into Microsoft Dynamics CRM cases. The three Zendesk fields that are supported are Status, Priority, and Type.

Add Zendesk Ticket Grid

Now you are ready to add the Zendesk ticketing panel to any of the entity pages that you’ve configured mappings for. You need to repeat the steps below for each entity type you want the ticketing grid displayed on.

In Microsoft Dynamics, navigate to the first entity where you want to add the ticketing grid. For this example, we’ll refer to a Contact record.

Select any contact in your list and navigate to the Form Editor.

In Dynamics 2015, highlight the More (…) tab(1) and select the option for Form(2) to start the form editor.

In Dynamics 2011, navigate to the Customize (1) tab and click on Form (2)

In the Form Editor, click the Insert tab (1), then click the Web Resource button (2).

In the Add Web Resource page, click the magnifying glass next to Web resource to find the Zendesk ticket grid (zd_/Pages/TicketGrid/TicketGrid.html).

In the next page, select the check box next to zd_/Pages/TicketGrid/TicketGrid.html, then click OK.

Back in the Add Web Resource dialog box you should see zd_/Pages/TicketGrid/TicketGrid.html in the Web resource field. Enter a Name and Label you can easily recognize (consider naming it Zendesk Ticket Panel). Check the box for Pass record object-type code and unique identifier as parameters. Click OK.

ou now have a Zendesk ticket panel in the form layout that you can drag anywhere you’d like on the page. You can even create a special subsection for it if you’d like.

After you place the panel, navigate to the Home tab, click Save, then click Publish.

Refresh the contact page you had open and you should see the new Zendesk ticket panel where you placed it!

Repeat these steps for any other entities you have created mappings for.

Support

If you have problems or questions, please feel free to contact us at: http://www.interactivewebs.com – We have a range of other integration products, including website to CRM integrations for forms, billing, kb, support and more.

Author: InteractiveWebs

This blog is the combined blog work of the InteractiveWebs Dev Team. Together we work on a range of DotNetNuke (DNN) applications, modules, Silverlight, and Microsoft CRM Portal integration products.
Our Business is website design and hosting, with a strong focus on DotNetNuke, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Silverlight and iPhone iPad development.
View all posts by InteractiveWebs

As discussed via email Lars, this was the address being incorrect in the CRM server. As per these instructions: CRM Address: This is the address of your CRM server in the following format: e.g.. https://contoso.hostedcrm.com:444/ You type “contoso.hostedcrm.com” (without the “ “ ).

I think I’m having the same problem (Dynamics CRM 2015 – in the cloud) and getting error “There was a problem fetching data from CRM. Check the url, credentials, and the Zendesk for Microsoft Dynamics application installed in your Microsoft Dynamics instance.”

We have the install Solution for your CRM system that we have updated for free and released in the blog as a free download. This has been updated to work on CRM 2015 self hosted and online. So yes that is.

We can allow you to use our hosted Web Service to connect to Zendesk. This is only $10 per month to cover our costs for hosting it. (almost free).

Or if you want to host your own copy of the web services. We can create an instance for you and hand it over for you to host. The cost to create that custom web service for your company is $400.

I installed the solution on a CRM Online Sandbox instance. It changes the site map. Sudddenly I have two CRM 4.0 menus in the navigation and some of the 2015 features/navigation areas are gone.
Work place and Ressource Center with big colorfull 4.0/2011 icons messing up the navigation.
Deleted the solution and got back normal sitemap.

This is likely a simple Script conflict that would need to be troubleshot. We would be happy to have a look at this for you if you can provide login details to us in a support request on our site: http://www.interactivewebs.com

Thank you for the additional information. We actually have a note in the blog saying almost exactly the opposite: “NOTE – This works best in Chrome – We found troubles with IE and Safari (not our work)!” our experience was the chrome was the one that functioned, where others did not. This now makes me suspect that if you’ve been using a browser, the cased data within the browser might be causing this initial problem and simply opening up in a new browser might be the solution to problems. As mentioned in the blog, this aspect of the integration is not our work however we will be taking a look to see if we can help improve it.